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Last month saw the release of the Department of Commerce’s White Paper on Copyright. Specifically, the voluminous (107 page) report took up three specific issues: “Remixes,” broadly defined to include all forms of combining copyrighted works, including “fan fiction;” “The First Sale Doctrine,” especially whether the doctrine should apply to digital goods and “Statutory Damages,” including whether the penalties should be lessened or further guidelines established. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., takes a look at the contentions on all sides of these issues, and suggests where the DOC went right, or perhaps wrong, in their recommendations.

Two months ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Spotify was not paying a large amount of royalties to songwriters on the songs they played, even though Spotify had a specific legal obligation to do so. Then, other songwriters spoke up and said that they also had songs being played by Spotify, but had never been paid. Is this possible? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., gets directly involved and discovers that this seems to be another example of a tech company that treats obeying the law as a mere inconvenience.

It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Cox Communications. The Internet Service provider was hit with a Federal Judge’s decision that because of its business practices, it was not eligible for immunity from copyright infringement committed by their subscribers, or what is generally referred to as “safe harbor.” Wasting no time, Cox’s insurance company, Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s, London, immediately filed suit in New York State Court, seeking a declaration that it would not be obligated to insure Cox against any damages assessed. Nova Southeastern University’s Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., explains the 35 page decision, which details Cox’s efforts to not only restrict the number of notices it received, but also keep active subscribers who were known to be serial copyright infringers.

The internet continues to swirl with the rumors that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (SBCTEA) passed in 1998 was the product of the Walt Disney Company descending upon Congress and lavishing such huge amounts of money on Congress that it overcame their good sense. In some corners of the internet, this story is repeated as the absolute truth. But is it? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., digs into the legislative history of the SBCTEA and the amounts of money Disney paid out, and finds out that what is shocking is not really all that shocking.

Bikram Choudhury is the developer of the very popular “hot yoga” system, where a carefully selected series of 26 yoga positions is performed for 90 minutes in a room heated to 105 degrees. The success of the system has made him very wealthy, and litigious. He has threatened and sued yoga studios claiming his carefully arranged system is protectable by copyright law as either a compilation or choreography. Now one rival studio has taken Bikram “to the mat” saying his sequence of poses is not protected by copyright at all. Who’s right? Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle J.D., details the major points of the court’s ruling and finds you don’t need to bend over backwards to teach the yoga poses you have in mind.